Lady Hurricanes Close Bond Beneficial For Team Success
By Jack Danilewicz
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Del.icio.usWhen Kapolei water polo player Bethanie Salas-Selem seeks the unvarnished truth, she doesn’t have far to travel. Older sister Ashlie has been there and done that, after all.
“She tells me straight up - she never sugar-coats anything,” Bethanie said of her sister’s input. “That helps me.”
Ashlie Salas-Selem is a good example to follow. The oldest of four children, she was a standout swimmer and water polo player at Kapolei before earning an athletic scholarship to Sienna College in New York. After a year there, Ashlie returned to Oahu and is now a student and cross country runner at Chaminade University.
“She’s the biggest inspiration in my life,” Bethanie said of Ashlie, who is three years older. “I think because of her competitive drive. Even now, she gets up at 4:30 in the morning to get to Chaminade and run (with the cross country team) before class.”
For her part, Bethanie has done her big sister proud as she approaches the final days of her prep water polo career with the Hurricanes. Kapolei, which took a 5-4 record into the weekend, is preparing for this week’s OIA tournament, which runs Thursday-Saturday. The top six teams from league’s post-season move on to the state water polo championships next month.
Bethanie was part of Kapolei’s most significant win to date, in her freshman season of 2007, when she and her sister helped the Hurricanes defeat Roosevelt in the OIA semifinals. While Kapolei lost, it marked the farthest a Hurricanes team has gone.
Equally vivid in Bethanie’s mind was her first varsity game, also versus Roosevelt. “Seeing my older sister next to me and my parents in the bleachers, it was a crazy moment, being in my first varsity game and starting as a freshman,” she said.
This week, Kapolei will look to its leaders - like Bethanie - to set the pace.
As the girls went through practice last week, the emphasis was all on playing vertically.
“Our whole practices have been spent on straight swimming,” she said. “We need to get back and forth on defense every time.”
Converting from offense to defense is one of the more demanding assignments in water polo, and part of being a leader is setting the right example, in her view. “That (transition) plays a huge role, and knowing when it is time to transition. It can be really, really tiring when you swim all the way down, turn the ball over, and have to swim all the way back. What has really improved with us since the beginning of the season is our communication.”
Like her sister, Bethanie also has been a competitive swimmer for Kapolei, although she took a few years off prior to high school. She’s one of three year-round swimmers on the team. The rest are exclusive to water polo.
“All of our girls pretty much started from scratch. What I like most is the team aspect of water polo. One person can’t play water polo. You need the other six. Everyone has to combine their talents to be successful (as a team).”
The time and effort that go into it naturally promotes cohesiveness, as the current team has found, according to Bethanie, who noted that the players rarely hang out together outside of the pool.
“Our team is unique,” she said. “None of us hangs out, really, but once we get into the water, we act like we’re the best of friends, and we need to have that close relationship to be a good team.”
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